Witch from the Sea

“He is a powerful man in these parts. I know of none who do not tremble before him. Suppose you inform against him. Where would you inform? What would happen? He is too powerful. You would never stop him. He would have means of evading justice.”

He looked beyond me with a faraway look in his eyes, and he said, “There is only one way of making sure that he never does this again. That is by killing him.”

“But you are a man of peace,” I said.

“This is the way to bring peace. Sometimes it is necessary to remove someone who is corroding the society in which we live. We had to kill Spaniards when we defeated the Armada. I have no remorse for them. We were saving our country from a cruel enemy. We drove off those ships which carried the invader and his instruments of torture. I would fight again and again; I would kill any Spaniard who tried to land in England. This is different. This is a ship full of cargo, a trading ship. The wrecker wants that cargo so he lures the ship on to the rocks; he sends thousands of men and women to their deaths for he must make sure that there are no survivors to carry the tale of villainy where it might be acted on. No, there is only one way, I say.”

I looked at him fearfully. In his eyes there was a fanatical hatred—so alien to him.

“I am going to kill your father,” he said.

“No, Fenn,” I cried; and I put my arms about him.

He put them aside; then he looked at me sadly.

“It would always be between us,” he said. “He killed my father. I can never forget that nor forgive him. And I shall kill yours. You will never forget that either.”

He looked down at his father’s grave; then he turned away and left me there.

I ran after him. I had to stop him, I knew he meant what he said. He had idolized his father; he had gone on doing so after he was dead. He had refused to believe that he was dead and gone on dreaming of his return.

And my father was responsible for his death—he had killed him as certainly as though he had run him through with a cutlass and left him to die.

I heard the shouting voices above the wind.

“He be gone out,” said one.

I saw them in the Seaward courtyard. There were about four of the men who worked with my father.

“He be at the Teeth,” said Jack Emms, a dark-haired man with battered features.

“Why should he go there?” cried Fenn. “There’s no wreck. He’s been merciful of late. There has been no disaster there for the last two months to my knowledge.”

“There he be gone, Master.”

Fenn had the man by the throat. I had not known he was capable of such violence. It was born of anger which came from the love of his father. He could not forget that but for this man, his father would have been alive today.

“Tell me where he is. I will know,” he said, “or it will be the worse for you.”

I saw then that Fenn was a man with the strength of my father. I had thought him gentle and so he would be—gentle and tender; but he was an idealist as his father had been and now he was full of righteous anger.

“He be gone, Master, with Jan Leward. There always be cargo that stays in the foundered ships. We go out now and then to recover it.”

“I am going out there,” said Fenn. “I am going to catch him at his evil trade.”

“Nay, Master.”

“But yes,” cried Fenn. “Yes, yes!”

I was terrified. I pictured my father out there at the Teeth, with the howling wind whipping the waves to fury. And Fenn there … in the midst of his enemies.

I wanted to cry: “Don’t go. Jack Emms is your enemy. All these men are your enemies. They will destroy you because you have come among them like an avenging angel. You are trying to destroy their lucrative business. Fenn, don’t go.”

It would be to plead in vain. He was going to confront my father. He was going to accuse him of the murder of his father; and I knew he planned to kill him. He would not take the cowardly way out, to go away with me and live far away from Castle Paling. He was right, for neither of us could do this. I knew too that when the wind howled and the storms raged we should be thinking of sailors in peril near the Devil’s Teeth; and the cries of drowning men would haunt us through the years.

But if he was going out there, I was going with him. I leaped into the boat.

“No, Tamsyn,” shouted Fenn.

“If you go,” I retorted, “I am coming with you.”

Fenn looked at me and his fear for me overcame his fury against my father.

I said: “My father is a murderer. He has been responsible for the deaths of thousands.” I was thinking of my mother. He had not killed her but he had connived at her murder and married her murderess. And since her death he had not been a happy man. Fenn must not suffer a murderer’s remorse. I must save him from that. “Fenn,” I went on, “I beg of you, do not have his death on your conscience.”

His face hardened. “He killed my father.”

“I know … I know. But it is not for you to kill him. If you do the memory will haunt you all your life. Fenn, we have found each other. Let us think of that.”